Antelope Valley Station Unit 1 starts maintenance outage
Unit 1 at the Antelope Valley Station near Beulah, ND, begins a nine-week maintenance outage.
Basin Electric Power Cooperative
- August 26, 2011
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Antelope Valley Station Unit 1 will come off line at midnight on Aug. 26 for the start of a nine-week planned maintenance outage.
John Jacobs, plant manager at Antelope Valley, said the outage is longer than a typical five- or six-week outage because of the scope of work planned. “The generator is the critical path in this outage. We have been monitoring hot spots in the generator core, and it’s time to make repairs,” he said.
A contractor will be working around the clock to disassemble the generator, which includes removing the rotor, stripping the windings, and removing the core iron. The generator rotor and exciter will be shipped to Siemens in North Carolina for complete overhauls and rewinds. The generator core will be restacked and rewound on site at the power plant.
“We’ll be removing 14.5 tons of copper, and more than 200 tons of steel from the generator. We’ve been working with Kevin Dissell (Basin Electric asset recovery coordinator) to recover the best value of these metals through a scrap dealer,” Jacobs said.
Jacobs said the generator repairs, while accounting for about two-thirds of the entire outage budget, will save in the long run. “The generator will be brand new. Previous inspections were required every six years. With this project complete, inspection will now be required on a 10-year cycle. That’ll save us one overhaul during that timeframe,” he said.
Additionally, crews will replace worn-out tubes in the lower slope of the boiler as they did in Unit 2 last year. Obsolete relays will be replaced with new ones. In the scrubber, the spray dryer chambers will receive a protective coating to prevent corrosion and buildup that has caused failures at other power plants with similar systems.
Unit 1 is planned to be placed back in service at the end of October.
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